Rexel USA CEO Roger Little sat down with tED magazine at the end of 2024 to talk about key issues impacting our supply chain. That included the continued use of mergers and acquisitions, workforce development, electrification, and Rexel’s continued commitment to using technology.
In this fourth part of our four-part series, Little discussed workforce development at Rexel, and its best practices toward recruiting and retaining top talent.
Part 1: Roger Little Discusses Mergers and Acquisitions
Part 2: Roger Little Discusses The Future With Technology
Part 3: Roger Little Discusses Electrification (www.tedelectrified.com)
tED magazine: When you started and when we did our first interview, you mentioned you had a goal of not just being at Rexel headquarters, but you were going to branches. You were talking to people like branch managers and things like that. My conversations with folks at that level is that they are still struggling with staffing and to make sure they are fully staffed. Give me an idea, I’m assuming you’re just like everybody else and it’s not a negative, of what you’re working on to attract more people to the workforce? What are you hearing from those branch managers about their needs, and what are you doing to get folks on board?
Roger Little, CEO, Rexel USA: The first thing we did this year, which was new for us, was we spent a lot more time understanding the employee turn. And everything is fine. Let’s just say you’ve got 10 or 12 or 14% employee churn but exactly what roles are churning? And what we did find was we’ve got really good retention in the outside sales and the specialist and the branch manager space. That tends to be very low turnover. We’re happy with their turnover there. But it’s huge turnover in that warehousing, logistics, and transportation space. There are certainly geographic hot areas, where there’s a lot of competition for those positions. With huge FedEx or UPS depots, plus the big Amazon players will come to town and kind of disrupt the warehousing and logistics space and offer a little more. People will typically take the jump, so we’ve had to react much quicker to where we’ve seen that. The days of single merit increases during the year are gone, along with some of those roles because you really have to keep up with the local markets. We love to have bands of salaries and wages by rule, but what we found is we have to be pretty dynamic in some of those bands, and it’s not something we were used to doing in the past.
To your point on attraction, it is really about finding where those people go to find a job. It’s changed a lot. If you think of this, and I don’t want to sound like the old days, people used to open the newspaper and look in the want ads, which are hard to find or don’t even exist anymore. Where you see the best source of candidates has probably changed twice or three times in the last two years. The HR team focused its attention on recruiting and attracting that talent and we’ve definitely let them find their way and be a little more resourceful than we’ve been in the past.
Just to retain them, as I said earlier, we have to figure out what the competition is doing, who is the competition what are they doing. Honestly, it’s not traditional. Other distributors are all in the same boat. It’s the disruptors in that logistics and warehousing world right now.
tED magazine: The other crazy thing about that, and certainly you’ve talked to a lot of people who are in higher positions right now that started in the warehouse, or started driving a truck or they started and sweeping floors. You can go to Amazon if you want but Amazon isn’t going to provide you what could potentially be a swift climb up the ladder to positions where you can go to NAED conferences, or you’re promoted multiple times. How do you think we should start selling that to warehouse workers and drivers?
Little: Our best advertisement for that or our best resources for that is people that have gone through a path with us that started in the warehouse or in the counter area and are now on the road or branch manager or heading up a logistics center for us. If you’re running the distribution center in Orlando and you came through the organization that’s a great source of inspiration for somebody coming in, and to your point that’s what is different about us, our industry, or in this case Rexel specifically. We’ve really tried to get that voice of the employee from a standpoint of somebody that’s walked a mile in their shoes or their work boots. That has been our best way, but it takes time, and it takes individual talent development people to keep an eye on those employees. Not just their direct supervisor. You have to have a lot of touches. And explain what’s going on in your organization, what the opportunities are.
I think it goes without saying that today’s employee wants to see a path wants to see a very quick path. Those of us who started in the warehouse and then slowly moved up the inside sales or another counter position or another role, it was typically years. It was measured in years. Now it’s measured in months, and people want to see a rapid progression. Ironically, it’s very available to them, so shame on us if we’re not showing them that path because I think we all know that path is available. We’ve got good talent and they’re ready to advance. There are positions available whether it be through the attrition of people leaving or just pure retirements, which is obviously pretty rapid these days.
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